Before the internet became a shopping mall littered with autoplay video and productivity hacks, there were feminist websites built out of passion, rage, cheap hosting plans, and whatever weird HTML someone could teach themselves at two in the morning. The internet felt smaller. Stranger. More personal.
These spaces weren’t necessarily polished. They loaded slowly. Sometimes half the links were broken. The forums were chaotic. The fonts were questionable. But they felt alive. They gave people permission to think critically, make art badly, talk openly, and build identities outside whatever mainstream culture expected from women online. Long before “creator economy” became a phrase people said with a straight face, feminist websites were already creating communities around music, politics, craft, mental health, DIY culture, sexuality, friendship, and survival.
A lot of these sites are gone now, or they’re hanging on through old screenshots and fragments on the Wayback Machine. Some were swallowed by social media. Some ran out of money. Some simply couldn’t survive the shift from independent internet culture to algorithmic content machines. But their influence is still everywhere, even if people don’t realize it. You can see traces of them in newsletters, Patreon communities, indie magazines, Tumblr aesthetics, and handmade culture.
There’s a growing hunger for a more human internet again. Revisiting these forgotten feminist websites isn’t just nostalgia for glitter GIFs and blogrolls. It’s a reminder that the internet once felt collaborative instead of competitive — built by people trying to connect rather than optimize themselves into exhaustion.
We’ve put together a hearty list of some of the best feminist websites, alive and dead, for you to sink your teeth into. If you think we missed one — and we know we did — share it in the comments.
- Rookie Mag
Teen feminism, DIY culture, feelings, fashion, art, interviews, playlists, and internet weirdness. It shaped a whole era of online feminist blogging in the 2010s and still feels deeply influential to the kind of smart-but-messy internet a lot of people miss. - Bitch Media (Instagram)
Sharp feminist pop culture criticism before every second person on TikTok called themselves a media critic. Longform essays, politics, TV analysis, music writing, and genuinely thoughtful internet feminism. - Venus Zine (archived)
A huge influence on indie girl culture online. Music, style, feminism, DIY life, interviews, and personal essays with a softer alt-magazine energy than a lot of Riot Grrrl-era media. (Follow the link to see my feature as ‘Reader of the Week’ from way back in 2009!) - Gurl.com (archived)
Before social media, this was where girls went for brutally honest advice, feminism-adjacent humour, quizzes, body image discussions, and chaotic late-90s internet energy. - Bust Magazine
Still active, but its early web presence and forums feel strangely forgotten now. Feminist crafting, indie music, sex positivity, politics, and handmade culture all collided here long before “girlboss” culture swallowed everything. - Feministing
One of the defining feminist blogs of the 2000s blog era. Fast-moving commentary, activism, reproductive rights discussions, and early internet feminist discourse before everything became algorithmically flattened. - Sad Girls Club
An important early mental-health-centred feminist internet space that mixed vulnerability, art, community care, and digital culture before “wellness branding” became corporate. The site still exists but their blog seems to be retired. - GeekGirlCon
Part convention, part online feminist geek hub. A reminder of how important niche feminist internet communities were before everything got folded into giant social platforms. - Make/Shift Magazine (archived traces remain online)
A feminist response to mainstream women’s magazines: anti-consumerist, political, artistic, weird, and handmade. It blurred the line between zine culture and independent online publishing in a really interesting way.
A lot of these websites disappeared quietly, without the recognition they deserved. But their fingerprints are still all over the internet culture many of us are trying to reclaim now. Every independent blog, weird little community project, handmade online shop, digital zine, and stubbornly personal website carries a bit of that legacy forward.
Maybe the future of the internet isn’t inventing something entirely new. Maybe it’s remembering what made people feel connected in the first place — and building smaller, stranger, more human corners again.
Share your favourite feminist sites below.
AXO (she/her) is a multidisciplinary creator and editor based in Toronto. She is the founder of She Zine Mag, Side Project Distro, BBLGM Club, and several other projects under the AXO&Co umbrella — each rooted in DIY culture, creative rebellion, and community care. Her work explores the intersection of craft, technology, and consciousness, with an emphasis on handmade ethics, neurodivergent creativity, and the politics of making. She is an advocate for accessible creativity and the power of small-scale cultural production to spark social change. Her practice merges punk, print, and digital media while refusing to separate the emotional from the practical. Above all, her work invites others to build creative lives that are thoughtful, defiant, and deeply handmade.
